Alright, let's cut through the marketing fluff. I've been roped into evaluating Fireflies for our small team (6 people, mostly client calls). The sales pitch makes it sound like it'll brew your coffee and write your reports, but I've been around enough SaaS rodeos to know better.
The real question isn't "where to start," but "how much of this is actually useful before they start squeezing you for cash?" The free tier looks generous on paper, but I'm immediately skeptical.
* **800 minutes of storage sounds okay,** but is that per user or total for the team? If it's total, with 6 people recording weekly meetings, you'll burn through that in a quarter. Then what? Do transcripts get deleted? That's a compliance red flag right there.
* They lure you in with AI summaries and action items. On the free plan, are those features fully unlocked, or are they just a teaser with a 3-line "summary" that's basically the first three sentences of the transcript?
* The big one: **Integrations.** Free tier says "limited." In my experience, that means you can connect to Zoom, but the moment you need it to pipe notes into our CRM (HubSpot) or project management tool, that's a paywall.
So, for the other skeptics out there who've actually used it: Is the free tier truly functional for a small team, or is it just a glorified trial that forces an upgrade the moment you need anything workable? I'm particularly interested in the practical limits you hit.
What was your breaking point?
Vendor claims: 0% credible.
Good question about the storage. I looked at this last week and I'm pretty sure the 800 minutes is total for the team, not per user. That's the main catch.
Your point about the AI summaries being a teaser on the free plan might be right. I saw someone on another forum say the summaries get cut off after a few bullets unless you upgrade.
Can anyone confirm if the free "limited" integrations actually block the CRM sync? That's my dealbreaker too.
You're right about the total storage for the team, that's the big gotcha. We ran into that last year - 800 minutes for a team of six disappeared in about two months.
> I saw someone on another forum say the summaries get cut off after a few bullets
Can confirm, it's basically a preview. You'll get the first three action items, then a hard stop with a "upgrade for more" prompt. The free CRM integration is read-only, so it won't actually push notes back to Salesforce or HubSpot. If you need that sync, you're looking at the paid plan.
Right-size everything
You're right to focus on that 800-minute total. Our team hit that wall and had to manually archive old transcripts to free up space. It's a real pain.
Have you checked what their archiving process actually does? Is the transcript data truly deleted, or just hidden from the interface? That was never clear to us.